Blood pressure serves as a vital metric for evaluating overall health and forecasting the risk of stroke or heart failure. As the primary cause of worldwide mortality, cardiovascular disease necessitates regular blood pressure monitoring for effective personal healthcare. The demand for continuous blood pressure monitoring devices has risen in recent years. While LED-based photoplethysmography (PPG) technology in smartwatches has been available, their optical sensor limitations hinder their ability to meet international standards for automatic sphygmomanometers. Now, researchers have developed a highly sensitive, wearable piezoelectric blood pressure sensor and validated its accuracy through clinical trials.

To create the wearable piezoelectric blood pressure sensor, scientists at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST, Daejeon, Korea) transferred an ultra-sensitive, inorganic piezoelectric membrane from bulk sapphire substrates to flexible ones. These ultrathin piezoelectric sensors, only a few micrometers thick (one hundred times thinner than a human hair), establish a conformal contact with the skin, enabling the accurate capture of blood pressure from the subtle pulsations in blood vessels. Clinical trials confirmed the sensor's accuracy, adhering to international standards with deviations within ±5 mmHg and a standard deviation below 8 mmHg for both systolic and diastolic blood pressure. Furthermore, the research team successfully integrated the sensor into a watch-style device for facilitating continuous blood pressure monitoring.

“Major target of our healthcare devices is hypertensive patients for their daily medical check-up. We plan to develop a comfortable patch-type sensor to monitor blood pressure during sleep and have a start-up company commercialize these watch and patch-type products soon,” said KAIST Professor Keon Jae Lee who led the collaborative research team.

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